Canon PowerShot SX50 HS review: Not your average compact

Looking at the specifications for Canon’s new PowerShot SX50 HS may leave you thinking that you have opened the pages of some futuristic fantasy: a compact camera with a zoom lens that covers a range equivalent to 24mm up to 1200mm with a digital zoom doubling this figure! Well specifications don’t take pictures; photographers do, if they have the right camera. Is this the right camera?

The Canon PowerShot SX50 HS is a compact camera with a 12.1 Megapixel BSI CMOS 1/2.3" sensor (6.17x4.55 mm), data is handled by Canon’s DIGIC 5 processor. The most striking feature is the lens: 4.3mm to 215mm zoom, that’s 50x. With a focal length multiplier of 5.64x that gives a 35mm equivalent of just a little over 24mm to 1200mm with a maximum aperture of f3.4 to f6.5. To make this immensely long lens viable Canon has included its Intelligent IS image stabilization rated by them at 4.5 stops, meaning that theoretically you could shoot at 1/30 and get the result of shooting at 1/750. With full HD video and a range of other enhancements: Zoom framing Assist, Smart Auto, Multi-area White Balance and High-speed Burst HQ, plus manual over-rides for pretty much everything and RAW capture too. The decider though is the price tag, which is well below others, like the Panasonic DMC-FZ150, so you can see that this is a camera that should at least make people look a little closer.

Further readings for the Canon PowerShot SX50 HS review: Not your average compact

To provide photographers with a broader perspective about mobiles, lenses and cameras, here are links to articles, reviews, and analyses of photographic equipment produced by DxOMark, renown websites, magazines or blogs.

For photographers who just can't get enough telephoto power, there's the Canon PowerShot SX50 HS HS. This camera packs a whopping 50X, 24 - 1200mm lens, which is more than you'll find on any other super zoom on the market (at least for now). While having all that telephoto power sounds appealing, keep in mind that you'll need to either use a tripod or crank up the ISO a bit in order to get a sharp photo at full telephoto, and of course the latter comes with a penalty in image quality. The SX50 HS has received a nice face-lift since last year's PowerShot SX40, with good control placement and solid build quality. The only thing I don't really like is the rear dial, which is flush with the four-way controller and difficult to turn. I think this camera would also benefit from having a side-mounted zoom controller, which you'll find on some of its competitors.

First replies for this comment

Re: Great sensor but the max. aperture of the lens...

Well, the f2.8 of the FZ200 sounds better than it is in reality.Compare to the SX50, the noise performence of the FZ200 is much worse.For example, when you zoom to 600mm with the FZ200 in F2.8 iso100and you have.. lets say a shutterspeed of 1/120s ...you just can put the SX50 in ISO400 easily and still have the same noise performence as the FZ200. The very good noise performence of the SX50 compare to the FZ200 is kind of an equalizer to the constant aperture of the FZ200.The SX50 delivers a better imagequality in general. i would say the best of allbridge/megazooms so far.

in addition.. iso1600 is still very good usable on the SX50(especially in raw).. on the FZ200 its total crap.